Students learn about hospital jobs
By Laura Collins
Published in News on July 5, 2010 1:50 PM
News-Argus/MICHAEL BETTS
Taylor Corbett looks at her hands under a black light to see how thoroughly she cleaned them after a lesson by Infection Control Practitioner Pam Lewis, right, during Health Careers Connection 2010 camp at Wayne Memorial Hospital.The camp is a week-long program for high school students interested in entering the health care field.
Some Wayne County high school students are getting a jump start on what may be their future careers.
More than 20 rising sophomores, juniors and seniors attended the Wayne Memorial Hospital Health Careers Connection camp last week. Valerie Peele, staff development coordinator, said every high school in Wayne County was represented at the camp. The students were each nominated by their school to attend.
The camp, which ran Monday through Friday, showed students the ins and outs of the hospital.
"The camp is for anyone in school interested in health careers," Ms. Peele said. "We cover everything, not just nursing careers but radiology, physicians, lab, all the disciplines are covered."
The students spent the first half of each day in class learning about specific medical fields from medical professionals. Then, for the second part of the day, they shadowed employees that work in their particular field of interest.
"Just the ability to shadow in all those different areas, they can find out that it may not be what they really want to do or there may be another field they like that they haven't fought about yet," Ms. Peele said. "Especially for the seniors, it helps them solidify their decisions to pursue medicine."
Also during the camp, the students worked in groups and developed presentations that were given on Friday. For the presentations the students were required to research their specific field and create a Powerpoint presentation that explained what colleges offer majors in those fields, what college courses are required, what the daily job is like and the typical work schedule. As part of the research, the students also interviewed a person in the hospital that currently works in that field.
Two students, Chantrel Reynolds, 17, and Kim Martell, 16, said they were at the camp because they are interested in becoming doctors.
"I'm thinking heavily on doing something in the health care field. I'm thinking physician, and the camp helps me to know which field," said Miss Reynolds, a rising senior at Eastern Wayne.
"After taking a tour (of the hospital) I definitely want to pursue health care," said Miss Martell, a rising senior at Wayne Country Day School. "I want to do something with children, either a pediatrician or a prenatal nurse."
Both said that learning about determining a patient's vital signs proved interesting and that they also learned a lot about the importance of dietary needs in treating a patient. All of the students went through an exercise in which each was given a specific disease or condition and had to eat lunch accordingly.
"I was given intense diabetes," Miss Martell said. "Someone had to feed me, I couldn't eat over 1,200 calories and when everyone got pudding, I got cucumbers. I learned that diabetes restricted a lot of food and I didn't realize it was that serious."
Ms. Peele said some of the students who have attended the camp over the past seven years have gone on to work for the hospital.